Toronto is a no-brainer for most US tech companies. Cheaper to hire, abundant talent, similar (enough) culture, accessible time zone and very permissive immigration laws if you want to bring in more talent.

Salaries are increasing as a result, although the benefits have been masked by inflation, especially for real estate. The long term question is whether the increased demand for Toronto tech talent from US companies translates into more Canadian startups and successful Canadian companies.

I just moved to Toronto from Vancouver. The pay gap between Canada and US is closing. I got FAANG salary about 20% less than my US coworkers after conversion. However, I think I may still consider moving to the US in the future to have the opportunity to explore other cities. As well as save more to afford housing here in Canada.

I welcome anything that helps to grow Toronto and other Canadian cities. But the already unaffordable housing market[1] will become even worse for average Toronto household[2] if the tech talent continues to move into the city.

[1] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth-management/insights/202...

[2] https://www.narcity.com/toronto/the-surprising-average-incom...

> The big American companies came to Toronto in part because the cost of the talent was lower. According to the recruitment website Hired, the average annual tech salary in Toronto was 117,000 Canadian dollars in 2020 (only about $90,000 in U.S. dollars), versus $165,000 in Silicon Valley. But many local start-ups are now saying that because demand has suddenly risen, so have salaries, and it has become much harder to hire the talent they need.

Beyond this there's also the exchange rate difference. The gap is not as large as it was in the 1990s, but there's still some upside for Canadian work for hire shops that get paid by American companies in US dollars.

> “Everyone points to Miami as the next tech hub because it offers low taxes. But it offers little else from a tech point of view,” Mike Volpi, a partner with the venture capital firm Index Ventures, said on a recent visit to Toronto.

This article doesn't mention political differences and other intangibles but it should.

There are plenty of places like Miami with low taxes, and Toronto would be making a mistake in taking part in a race to the bottom. It's more effective for Toronto to differentiate itself by other jurisdictions by fundamentally offering different things and being a place that people want to move to because it isn't like the other places.

You could probably do a find and replace "Toronto" with "Vancouver" and come up with just about the same article. Tech industry in that city has also been on a big upswing in the last few years for the same reasons.

Amazon and Microsoft have been expanding in a big way amongst many other US tech firms.

Wake me up when Toronto or Vancouver salaries aren't 35-40% lower as measured in USD than the same role in a major US city. Even in a state with high state income taxes like NY or CA. Haven't seen it happening yet.

> Toronto is now the third-largest tech hub in North America. It is home to more tech workers than Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

I doubt this is true. One of my pet peeves is that people in Toronto (where I am from) occasionally claim that it is the 3rd largest city in "North America", but it depends entirely on the optimistic provisioning of political boundaries (and requires you to ignore Mexico in your definition of North America -- another pet peeve). For example: it's possible that Toronto beats Seattle if you count Bellevue separately, or LA if you split off "Silicon Beach" and Irvine, but I doubt that what people actually mean by "Toronto" beats the aggregated areas people mean when they say "Seattle" and "LA".

But this isn't the saddest part. The article seems to frame success as attracting large US-based tech companies (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta). This was always the case in Toronto -- there is no shortage of satellite offices attracted by lower local wages. But what is lacking is local technology companies that compete globally: Canada has Shopify, but little else. In general, entrepreneurs and risk takers head south for better fund raising and more risk tolerance and that's where the real value creation happens. Before Toronto (or anywhere else in Canada) can be a real tech town, they need cultural change to grow a real ecosystem with companies that can grow to global competitors. I think this kind of self-congratulatory article is actively harmful because it lulls people into thinking policymakers have done a great job at "attracting tech". Meanwhile, all the Canadians I know that have founded companies and been wildly successful have moved from Canada to the US at some point in their journey.

> Investment in new Toronto companies is still tiny compared with Silicon Valley. In 2021 and 2022, investors pumped $132 billion into Silicon Valley tech start-ups, according to the research firm Tracxn. In Toronto, that figure was $5.4 billion. But ultimately, it is tech talent that drives a tech hub, said Mr. Volpi, a Bay Area venture capitalist who also invested in Cohere.

> “The money will follow the talent,” he said.

Toronto has had the talent for decades. The money doesn't automatically follow, and there are lots of reasons it's not there.